Category Archives: Blogging

“Furthermore, as she goes on to lament a lack of interest in books as a necessary core for a new generation of writers, she mocks “blogging” which is actually helping more people write more than they would otherwise. It’s an elitist stance to suggest that just because it’s short-form and online it doesn’t matter. It’s also wrong. Studies have shown that students these days are much more comfortable writing — in large part because they spend so much more time communicating via the written word online.”

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.… Read the rest

I am taking this moment to riff on Joe Klein’s review of the recently published biography of Hunter S. Thompson. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ is a book that had a profound effect on the direction of my life. I spent one summer in the early 80’s living in that book due to the fact that there were no drugs to be had on the barren coast of New Hampshire at the time.

In many respects, the time could not be more timely for such a memorial to the giant of journalism. We are living in a period of great crisis for the media, a time of cynicism in which the need for visionaries who are not shills for global big corporate, who have the guts to steer through the difficult and dangerous waters of ‘truth’ and ‘freedom’.… Read the rest

Who controls information, what does it mean, and how does that relate to the media of blogs.

New York Times reaches out to the blogosphere, or the blogoshtan and asks for news during marshal law and the news blackout of Pakistan.

“With opposition protests blocked by the authorities in Pakistan, NYTimes.com is asking readers in Pakistan to help us report on events in the country by sending us eyewitness accounts of protests in photographs, video or text.”

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan:

“I must remove my uniform and there should be a civilian government,’’ Musharraf told state-run Pakistan Television today. “Elections must be held as soon as possible, by Feb. 15 at the latest.’’

Benazir Bhutto, leader of the main opposition party, called it “yet another vague announcement.… Read the rest